Announcing Dreamers Do Lie Is Available Now!

They say life is what happens while you’re making other plans. That certainly describes my life for the last year and a half.

When I changed my publishing strategy for 2019, I had big plans. I wanted to revamp the Eternity’s Empire series so the next few releases would be a bit more polished than earlier installments. And I wanted to publish Dreamers Do Lie.

If you’ve read my project report, you’ll know that I first wrote Dreamers Do Lie a long time ago – sometime around 2008, back when I was still trying to figure out how writing worked. Dreamers Do Lie was a passion project, one of the first I saw through to completion. Like so many other ideas, it came to me in a dream and I prodded its edges until it revealed its full tapestry.

In many ways, Dreamers Do Lie was the novel that taught me how to write. It was the first time I sat down and wrote a plan for what I wanted to happen. It was the first time I made extensive world building notes and actually stuck to the rules I established before I started writing. Dreamers Do Lie taught me all my bad habits, like my tendency to lose track of side characters, especially when it comes to their names. I also somehow managed to change the main character’s entire physical appearance at some point in the middle of the narrative – whoops!

I actually wrote this book twice.

For me, Dreamers Do Lie is a story of triumphs. This novel nearly ended up in a box forever not once, but twice. The first time I shelved it, I couldn’t figure out how to finish the story. I knew the book wasn’t ready for the world. But every time I looked at it, it seemed perfect in my eyes. I had no idea how to slay my darlings to make them better. Once my words were in a fixed form, they almost seemed like sacred things.

Rather than try to publish something that was clearly unfinished, I moved on. I wrote Symphony of the Stars and finally had my editing eureka moment. One of my first thoughts after that was that I had to return to Dreamers Do Lie. I finally understood how to make it better, and I felt obligated to give my first passion project the treatment it deserved.

Of course, by then, I was a much better writer than way back in 2008. So rather than edit what I had already written, I scrapped the manuscript and started over with the same story, concept and characters. The result is the story you can read today.

I’m extremely proud of this story. I may have learned to handle more complex plots since writing this series, but without Dreamers Do Lie, I never would have been able to make that leap. It is a stepping stone in my writing journey, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to share it with you.

It took me a long time to decide what I wanted.

For a long time, I wanted to traditionally publish Dreamers Do Lie. When I started the story I imagined it was the one, my big breakthrough, the idea that would finally land me an agent. And I did query agents for Dreamers Do Lie fairly extensively. I even got a couple of partial requests.

But about halfway through the process of querying, when I didn’t hear back from those few hopefuls, I stopped. I won’t say I gave up, because I don’t think of it that way. But I did stop.

Other things had been going on in my life. I made a decision to fully embrace self-publishing. I can’t claim that I’m massively successful or even that I know what the heck I’m doing. But after a lot of research and a lot of soul searching, I realized that self-publishing is the path for me. Maybe someday I will have traditionally published books. And if I do, that’ll be awesome. But working for myself, having everything exactly the way I want it, constantly challenging myself to learn and try the next thing… That’s what I want for my creative life.

So Dreamers Do Lie went back on the shelf to await publication. I had it all planned out. I would re-make my brand, re-make my current projects and get everything in my self-publishing career restarted with a bang.

Around that same time, my husband and I decided it was time to buy a new house. I was in the finishing stages of putting Dreamers Do Lie together and, for various reasons, I decided to push it back. I wanted to make a map for the book and its companion. Also, I wanted to get some really nice covers. And I wanted to understand what the heck I was doing.

Writing Dreamers Do Lie turned out to be the easy part.

Unfortunately, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I pushed Dreamers Do Lie‘s publication date because I wanted to give it the best possible release. Then I pushed the date again because we almost bought a house. Then I pushed it a third time because we did buy a house.

And then my life became a blur of house madness that involved chasing down banks, frantically remodeling a basement and trying to remember what normal as a concept even is.

2019 swallowed all my publishing plans. I won’t pretend I wasn’t devastated. In many ways, I feel like I’m starting over in 2020, and not the way I wanted to. But if there was one thing 2019 taught me, it’s that there’s never a perfect time. Sometimes the stars just won’t align no matter how hard you try. In situations like that, forward momentum is better than stasis. So when the New Year ticked over, I made a vow that this was the year people would be able to read Dreamers Do Lie.

2020 has proven pretty good at breaking everyone’s plans – mine included. So Dreamers Do Lie did not hit its original May release date. But it’s available now, today, and that’s what matters. I have worked so hard and so long on this book. There were so many times I almost gave up on it and allowed it to fade into the shadows. Even during this past month, I had moments where I felt like this book release would never actually happen.

But I did it. I took a weird dream about a burning boat and a demon and turned it into a book – a book you can read right now!

Dreamers Do Lie is Available Now!

Arimand has just arrived in the outermost circle of Hell. A soldier of the eastern armies, he was damned for following orders. Now he competes with the rest of Hell’s denizens for the resources to ease starvation, dehydration and exposure. He quickly realizes there is safety in numbers and secures himself a position with a clan called Vorilia. Every damned clan covets something, but Vorilia may possess Hell’s most extraordinary secret.

Kaylie is a soul too pure for Hell. Though she can’t recall her life, she insists she damned herself somehow. Arimand not only disagrees, he spurs a mad expedition to set her soul free. Mad, because Hell’s only exit lies in its inner circles. To reach it, the clan will have to sail a burning river, avoid an army of demons and cross an impassible wall.

Worse, a demon stalks their every step. He calls himself Moril, and he was sent by the King of Hell himself.

This high fantasy novel re-imagines elements of Dante’s Inferno and Greek Mythology.

Grab your copy today!

Still not sure if this book is for you? Read the first three chapters absolutely FREE right here on this website!

(PS: This cover was made by the absolutely amazing and fabulous Molly Phipps of We Got You Covered – please check her and her work out because I cannot even begin to express how happy I am with her work!)